This fast-paced sequel to Smuggler's Blues is a harrowing and at times comical journey through the criminal justice system at the height of America's War on Plants. Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release. Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination. Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.

Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has, over the past decade, built a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters on the cybercrime beat. In Kingpin, he pours his unmatched access and expertise into book form for the first time, delivering a gripping cat-and-mouse narrative—and an unprecedented view into the twenty-first century’s signature form of organized crime. The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone—some brilliant, audacious crook—had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the US economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin; other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents. Together, the cybercops lured numerous unsuspecting hackers into their clutches. . . . Yet at every turn, their main quarry displayed an uncanny ability to sniff out their snitches and see through their plots. The culprit they sought was the most unlikely of criminals: a brilliant programmer with a hippie ethic and a supervillain’s double identity. As prominent “white-hat” hacker Max “Vision” Butler, he was a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But as the black-hat “Iceman,” he found in the world of data theft an irresistible opportunity to test his outsized abilities. He infiltrated thousands of computers around the country, sucking down millions of credit card numbers at will. He effortlessly hacked his fellow hackers, stealing their ill-gotten gains from under their noses. Together with a smooth-talking con artist, he ran a massive real-world crime ring. And for years, he did it all with seeming impunity, even as countless rivals ran afoul of police. Yet as he watched the fraudsters around him squabble, their ranks riddled with infiltrators, their methods inefficient, he began to see in their dysfunction the ultimate challenge: He would stage his coup and fix what was broken, run things as they should be run—even if it meant painting a bull’s-eye on his forehead. Through the story of this criminal’s remarkable rise, and of law enforcement’s quest to track him down, Kingpin lays bare the workings of a silent crime wave still affecting millions of Americans. In these pages, we are ushered into vast online-fraud supermarkets stocked with credit card numbers, counterfeit checks, hacked bank accounts, dead drops, and fake passports. We learn the workings of the numerous hacks—browser exploits, phishing attacks, Trojan horses, and much more—these fraudsters use to ply their trade, and trace the complex routes by which they turn stolen data into millions of dollars. And thanks to Poulsen’s remarkable access to both cops and criminals, we step inside the quiet, desperate arms race that law enforcement continues to fight with these scammers today. Ultimately, Kingpin is a journey into an underworld of startling scope and power, one in which ordinary American teenagers work hand in hand with murderous Russian mobsters and where a simple Wi-Fi connection can unleash a torrent of gold worth millions.

This is a true story documented by confidential records, newspaper articles, and photographs. It is both the shocking, fast-paced autobiography of Sonny Gibson and an exposé of never-before-revealed inner workings of the Mafia and the United States prison system.

An epic of ambition, betrayal and comeuppance culminates with the world learning the devil's mask hides a pair of blind eyes! The hero of Hell's Kitchen is assailed as both civilian and super hero by a wave of his worst enemies - including the Owl, Mister Hyde, Bullseye, Typhoid and the Kingpin of Crime! But it's the heart of the Man Without Fear that gets the real workout with not only the introduction of Milla Donovan - but also the Black Widow, Elektra and Echo! Plus: the mystery of Leap-Frog and the trial of the White Tiger!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye. It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.

"I'm going to have fun breaking you, beauty queen."They call him kingpin. A blond titan with the looks of a god, the wealth of a king, and the influence of the mob. Lance Johnson is the guy you go to when you want anything on Woodcreek University's campus.And I mean, anything.He's got more than one dean in his pocket, as well as nearly all the university's staff--the professor I'm a TA for included.He's got grown men and respected scholars by their balls, but he doesn't have me.I have a direct hand over his academic future and not only does he know that, he gets off on it. He tests me in any ways he can. He plays with me and pushes our boundaries to the point of their brink. He doesn't care that I control his grades.And definitely doesn't care that I have a boyfriend.He says I'm nothing but a perfect, little beauty queen. A plaything he can't wait to break. He sets his sight on me and I'm a target of the most powerful man I've ever seen.He has to be if I let him kiss me.Warning: Kingpin is an NA enemies-to-lovers romance that contains dubious content and situations some may find triggering. It's recommended for readers 17+ and is a standalone novel with no cliffhanger. It's book two in a series of standalones titled Court University, which is a spin-off series about characters featured in Eden O'Neill's Court High books. Reading the Court High books first is not necessary for the enjoyment of Court University. The characters origin stories merely begin in Court High and can be referred to at any time if the reader so chooses. Enjoy!

They say love conquers all. It's a lie. The compulsive second novel in the USA Today bestselling Cartel trilogy. Five days a week, I dressed in smart business clothes. I painted my face, and went to work as an accountant. But nothing about my life was normal. For eight years I had been the property of the Gypsy Brothers Motorcycle Club. I laundered their money so well they'd never let me leave. My only glimmer of light was the man I loved. The man who had saved me. Dornan. His love had been the only thing that kept the demons at bay. But he'd become so immersed in the cartel's brutal business that I hardly knew him anymore. Dornan had been my salvation, but he was also my undoing. Would he pull me down into the darkness until he destroyed me? Could I save him? Did I even want to? Before the Gypsy Brothers there was the Cartel — from USA Today bestselling author Lili St Germain. Praise for the Cartel trilogy: 'Good lord, this series... this book... these characters.... they are seriously playing all sorts of havoc with my emotions, my feelings, my nerves and my anxiety levels' The Hopeless Romantics Book Blog 'Sensational, shocking, compelling and totally addictive ... the best when it comes to dark, brooding and bloody romance' Kelly, Perusing Princesses

Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot’s outlaw years. Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler’s Blues tells Stratton’s adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler’s Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot’s cultural history.

The true story of Max Butler, the master hacker who ran a billion dollar cyber crime network. The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: an audacious crook had staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the US economy. The culprit was a brilliant programmer with a hippie ethic and a supervillain's double identity. Max 'Vision' Butler was a white-hat hacker and a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But there was another side to Max. As the black-hat 'Iceman', he'd seen the fraudsters around him squabble, their ranks riddled with infiltrators, their methods inefficient, and in their dysfunction was the ultimate challenge: he would stage a coup and steal their ill-gotten gains from right under their noses. Through the story of Max Butler's remarkable rise, KINGPIN lays bare the workings of a silent crime wave affecting millions worldwide. It exposes vast online-fraud supermarkets stocked with credit card numbers, counterfeit cheques, hacked bank accounts and fake passports. Thanks to Kevin Poulsen's remarkable access to both cops and criminals, we step inside the quiet,desperate battle that law enforcement fights against these scammers. And learn that the boy next door may not be all he seems.

Katya. I live in a world surrounded by ruthless men. At their head? Kristoff Romanov, according to some, the most heartless kingpin of all. I am protected, yet caged, cherished, yet kept at bay. He vowed to protect me and give me anything I need, except his heart. He promised to always have my back. He lied. Kristoff. Would you destroy the woman you love, to avenge the one you lost? I live for my Bratva and my vengeance. Katya is the only thing that’s good about me. And I will wreck her. note: This is book 1 of a duet. This book ends on a cliffhanger. ​​​​​​This is a dark mafia romance with triggers.